Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames

Tam Hashford is tired of working at her local pub, slinging drinks for world-famous mercenaries and listening to the bards sing of adventure and glory in the world beyond her sleepy hometown.When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard. It's adventure she wants - and adventure she gets as the crew embark on a quest that will end in one of two ways: glory or death.It's time to take a walk on the wyld side.

Monster horde returns

Features the same great style, atmosphere and a few cool characters from the first book and short, to the point intro—the first fight against a giant, dangerous monster is around page 50. However it feels a bit more overwhelming compared to the first book with too many events in parallel which can feel chaotic. And there’s a very annoyingly curious main character.

Even though there are still a few really large, epic battles, overall it's much less about epic and more about dramas and tragedies and mysteries about everyone. And the ending is nice, hinting at new adventures.

I hope the next book is a bit less tragic.

Executive Summary: This was a decent sequel to [b:Kings of the Wyld 30841984 Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1) Nicholas Eames https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1477027207s/30841984.jpg 51246585] but I didn't like it quite as much as I hoped I would.Audiobook: Katherine Fenton does a pretty good job with the narration. I'm a bit removed from listening to this book, but I think she did a few voices and read the book in a way that helped keep me engaged even when the story was slow.Full ReviewThis was a very different book than I was expecting. While it's a sequel to [b:Kings of the Wyld 30841984 Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1) Nicholas Eames https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1477027207s/30841984.jpg 51246585], it's basically an entirely new cast of characters.For the most part I found the characters pretty entertaining. However I really found myself missing the characters from the first one, especially Slow-hand and Moog.While the story was a lot more original than the first book, I found it meandering too much. The first part of the book was almost more of a “slice of life” book than an adventure/action story like I was expecting.It could just be that I wasn't in the right mood for this book, because I still found parts of it really entertaining. I love the idea of a bard protagonist, and that element of the book was probably the best.It really is a book with nested stories as you get to learn more about the members of this new band led by Bloody Rose. Some of those stories I liked more than others, and I think that's what led to my attention wandering at times.Overall, I thought this was a good, but not great book. I'd probably read another set in this world, but it would depend a lot on my mood at the time.

Good, but maybe not as good as the first one. I found it a little less involving this time, although maybe that was due to the change of narrator for the audiobook (due to the different perspective). Worth someone's time, but maybe not the tour de force of the Kings of the Wyld.